Use the FIND function in excel to locate the comma and LEN and RIGHT function to peel off the county names. In my example, Galveston was duplicated and I had to manually change both names to Galveston to get my next VLOOKUPs to work.

In my case I'm just doing a zone map. VLOOKUP the zone values from your territory definitions. Then Vlookup a color name. In Excel you need to generate a list of colors that matches the county list in order. Probably best to assign a name to this color vector.

It's basic, but I got pretty far spending a 1/2 day working on this. You can also color states (look at state.fips) of the US as well. Add city names. The sky is the limit. You can get finer color variations, but again I just haven't gotten to that. But this will probably get a LOT of use in the years to come. Someone with R savvy could do things much cooler than I, but I know my co-workers will be duly impressed with even this simple level of ability.

With more advanced skills, you can define your colors, do the vlookup in R, and have it assign all the colors and everything. I plan to get there eventually, but that involves importing my data into R in the first place...

I'm getting a bit more efficient with them, although my methods are still crude. Nevertheless, my boss certainly took notice:

My boss came over and asked if I could put the number of accounts showing in each county, then create a state map for each of the 40+ states we write in, package them up, and hand them out at an offsite meeting. Guess I'm going to buckle down and consider more efficiencies...

Research in the field of information visualization is usually mediocre, often severely flawed, and only occasionally well done. In this article, I’ll critique a recently published research paper to illustrate some of the flaws that are common and to propose what we can do to improve the work. This is a paper by Michelle A. Borkin, Zoya Bylinskii, Nam Wook Kim, Constance May Bainbridge, Chelsea S. Yeh, Daniel Borkin, Hanspeter Pfister, and Aude Oliva, titled “Beyond Memorability: Visualization Recognition and Recall.” I’ve chosen this particular paper, not because it is exceptionally flawed, but because it has received a great deal of attention and the findings that it erroneously claims are potentially harmful to data visualization. This concerns me, and should concern us all.

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Visualizations don’t need to be designed for memorability— they need to be designed for comprehension. For most visualizations, the comprehension that they provide need only last until the decision that it informs is made. Usually, that is only a matter of seconds. When the comprehension has lasting value, it should be stored in memory, not the visualization. It is true that a visualization can be designed to serve as a mnemonic mechanism to encode a particular message in a memorable way. Borkin’s study, however, merely addresses characteristics that make visualizations memorable, not whether or how those characteristics can be used to encode comprehension.

We’ve known for quite a while that particular characteristics of data visualizations tend to catch our attention and make them sticky. For example, novel images and those that trigger strong emotions tend to stick in memory, but rarely, if ever, in a way that supports comprehension. If I incorporate an image of a kitten into a data visualization, I can guarantee that a test subject would remember seeing that kitten if it is shown to her again a few minutes later. But how is that useful? Unless the visualization’s message is that kittens are cute and fun, nothing of consequence has been achieved.

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4. The information visualization community is complacent.
Why is it that few people besides me are critiquing flawed information visualization research? I’m certainly not unique in my understanding of science. Several of my friends and colleagues do excellent research in the field. They’re aware of the same flaws I am, so why aren’t they speaking up? I suspect that for many, it is fear of recrimination or distaste for conflict that keeps them silent. I loathe recrimination and conflict as much as anyone. But I want information visualization to contribute as much as it can to the world, so I work to improve it. My lone voice, however, cannot turn the tide. Others who are respected in the field must speak up as well. Imagine what a difference we could make if we raised our voices in a chorus of guidance to elevate the work of our field. Oh, how I long for compatriots.